El Collar de la Paloma

All the works on this release are modal improvisations (mawwal) or adaptations of instrumental music, anonymous Arabic-Andalusian classical and traditional songs. Ibn Hazm of Córdoba was born in 994 and lived through the most critical years of Islamic al-Andalus. His era witnessed the break-up of the Caliphate and the formation of taifas, which inevitably hastened the decline of Moslem power in the Iberian peninsula. He was a privileged witness of these events, and he records them with a rich and prolific, encyclopedic opus. The Ring of the Dove is an eleventh century prose work written in Arabic by Ibn Hazm. The full title of the work is The Ring of the Dove, On Love and Lovers. The title reflects the custom in the Arabic literature of the period to create ornamental titles: a dove is pretty, but it is the ring that allows it to achieve optimal beauty.